This was a little something requested for a very long time, so i thought id finally get off my lazy ass and do it, so here you go, the M3 head dummies.

Oh yeah and each head is in a separate object layer, the Venus head is the non slim shape, also im not sure if this is the right version of the Venus head because i remember changing something at the back of the head.

Alright, a lot of people have been asking me what the M3 thing stands for in the M3 head, and its kind of a simple answer but theres a whole back story to how it all came to this, so as the 4th generation of the M series of anime heads is just around the hill, heres a little history lesson for those of you that are interested in reading this wall of text.

Okay so a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….
It was an interesting time around 2009 when the SL anime community was slowly dieing. The only good anime head available at the time, was created by a person that no longer played second life, and the head was no longer for sale.

I say good because there were nothing better on SL to compare it to at the time…

I wanted to be an anime person on SL too for a while now and since these heads were no longer for sale, i couldn’t get one for myself, lucky for me i already had some 3D modeling experience and just figured out how to create sculpted prims, witch was what we had at the time before mesh was introduced to SL, (you can find out more about sculpted prims in this article )i just learned how to make sculpts, so i made myself an anime head!

Fun fact: My head was the first one to have a nose, which was somehow revolutionary at the time.
Another fun fact: While i never made my head for sale, later on i have made a sailormoon avatar that uses a variation of that head, you can still find it on a discount in my store on the second floor.

So moving on, one day i met a girl named Miyu, who saw my anime head and she commissioned me to create an anime head for her dragon girl avatar, i called it Miyu head.

– The Miyu anime head –

There was still the anime head shortage problem on SL and since no one else was stepping up to fill that niche, i made a commercial version of the Miyu anime head witch was the very first M series head, the original M1 or simply Miyu anime head, and this is what the the M stands for.

Fun fact: The Miyu anime head came in 3 skin tones and had 3 corresponding skins for the linden avatar. These 3 tones are a standard to the M series heads and are still used today by the M series heads, Avatar 2.0 and Kemono. The three M1 linden skins can be used to match the M3 heads to your linden avatar. You can still find the M1 anime head pack on discount on the second floor of my ingame store.

– The M2 anime head –

A number of more advanced anime heads with multiple face expressions were created since then by wave of new, anime inspired content creators from japan, and the anime community was getting back on its feet.
But all these new anime heads had a few common and rather big problems, all the anime heads at the time were no mod for whatever reason and people couldnt adjust the size of the head or tint the skin color, and skins they came with were just fucking terrible. In addition, the face expressions on those heads were separate, pre made images, that had to be loaded onto the head, and the texture loading times were terrible back then, so you spent minutes having to stare at a grey or blurry head between each expression you wanted to load. Not only did this limit how many face expressions a head can have, this also limited most heads to just a single eye color and skin tone, and you had to buy a whole new head if you wanted to have another eye color. Not to mention that some of the heads were really half assed and looked like this.

And so it was up to me to step in and think of a way to solve these problems and save the day once more. And so the M2 anime head was made.

While other anime heads offered you a few premade face expressions and a single eye color, the M2 head allowed you to make your own expression and change them in real time without having to load anything, with a thing that i called the expression mixer HUD at the time.

The sculpt map was made in a way that would concentrate most of the UV space on the face and not waste it on blank spaces with no detail (witch was another big problem with anime heads at the time that i forgot to mention), this allowed me to put all the face expression components on a single page and change between them using texture offsets. The eyes were on a separate sculpted prim layer overlayed on top of the head, so you could have any eye color or even style you want and control eyes separately from the face, or tint the skin color without tinting the eyes. All this eliminated the need to create a million different images for each expression, skin tone and eye color.

Finally, i was really digging the relationship between the furry avatar creators and their modding community. They provided people all the necessary material needed to further personalize their avatars, and people modded the shit out of them, creating some really amazing things. So i have included all the textures full perm myself.

It was a dawn of a new era for SL, the advanced lighting model was introduced and together with the new M2 heads, SL was looking better than ever.

– Other experiments –

As time went by, i experimented with sculpt mapping and new head shapes, and a bunch of random heads were made in the process.

I kept pushing the limits of what can be done using sculpt mapping, Trying to put as much detail into it as i could with the limitations of the time. One of these heads that i was the most proud of, was the Venus head that came with the MGA2 Venus, Nightmare and S4 avatars that can still be found on discount on the second floor of my store. I managed to concentrate enough of the sculpted prim geometry on the face to give it real lips and a well defined nose and chin, witch was also a first for anime heads since mouths and noses were just drawn on the texture.

But my experiments didn’t stop there and eventually even figured out a way fix what was disappointing me the most and have a real mouth on and anime head, instead of one thats just drawn on the texture, witch was before thought as impossible to do with sculpted prims.

This would have been revolutionary at the time but there was one final limit that i simply couldnt push any further. the head looked really chewed up, and rumours were spreading that LL is going to implement 3D model uploading capabilities to SL, so was pointless to go with this any further.

– Other M2 series heads –

While most of my sculpted prim experiments were M1 style heads that could only blink and had no face expressions, a few of them did get the full M2 system implementation. These were the M2 male head, the M2 chibi head, as well as the Etna, BRS and Melissa avatars with their own M2 heads.

– The M3 before the M3 –

As time progressed, the limitations of the M2 anime head kept piling up, The shape was too blobby, the expressions were kinda meh, i also wanted my head to have all the fancy effects like blush and tears and other things that other heads had, and so it was time for me to shift gears once again and take it a bit further. I began sketching things up and planing out all the features and HUD layout.

But things didnt go well for my scripter at the time, he had his RL to take care off, work ate up all his time and he wasnt able to continue scripting for SL. The other guy i wanted to commission who boasted about how pro he is at scripting has also bailed on me when he took a look at my design documents. On top of that, mesh import was officialy announced by LL and open beta was soon to start, so this head wouldnt be a true next step in the end and more like a last step for the days of sculpted prims, so i made the decision to scrap it and start over in mesh, witch i didnt regret doing because mesh would finally allow me to do all these things i couldnt do with sculpted prims.

Fun fact: While the original M3 head was scrapped, the effort put into it didnt go to waste, the head was outsourced to .::U & A::. and was a part of the Noko hybrid mesh and sculpted prim avatar that can probably still be found in their store.

– The advent of mesh and the M3 prototype for Rikugou –

This was it, the true next level for second life anime avatars and a new era for SL. No more limitations, mesh opened so many new possibilities, finally anime heads could have a real mouth that could open, and real eyes that arent just drawn on the face. I got to work on my very first experimental mesh anime head witch i called the M3 prototype witch was later made into a part of the Rikugou avatar. Teaming up with my new friend Kourtnee who is now responsible for the scripting side of things (none of this would be possible without her after this point).

Not so fun fact: Originally, the M3 prototype was supposed to have blink. But this could not be done at the time because of a glitch that SL had with rigged meshes and alphas, making the invisible eyelids kill the eye textures behind them.

– The M3 Mesh Anime Head –

The M3 prototype was just an experiment and kind of like a proof of concept. Applying what i learned from my M3 Prototype experiment, i got back to my scrapped M3 head project, and all my dreams finally became a reality.

After its initial release, many changes, improvements and new features got added over the year till the head/system got perfected and i could begin work on my other anime head projects that utilize the M3 system

– M3 Kemono –

One of these projects were the Kemono avatar witch uses the M3 system for its head and will have a big ass blog post of its own about its development history.

– M3 Venus –

This also made me remember one of my other old experiments that didnt really go anywhere due to technical limitations of the time, the sculpted Venus head with a mouth. Now that mesh is a thing and i have the best scripters at my side, This time i could really do it!

Although its not as satisfying now as it would have been if i had managed to pull it off using sculpts, this is one thing i miss about sculpted prims, the challenge of doing the impossible.

– future plans –

This whole blog post is a bit of a time capsule because i wrote all of this up in like 2 or 3 years ago before bento was a thing, i was just too lazy to finish gathering all the screenshots for it. I was already thinking about M4 heads but my goal plans for the M3 series were not over yet, i wanted to make a male M3 head and a Chibi M3 head.

This is the original text:
“The M series doesnt end with the venus head, just like with the previews M2 heads, im also planing on making 2 different male heads and a chibi head.
Once all that is done, depending on what kind of new technologies will be implemented into sl in the future, i already have a bunch of ideas for an M4 head.”

And those new technologies turned out to be bento

So yeah, that is all, hope this wall of text wasnt too boring to read.

– Updates –

Get your update cards out for these hot new updates for all the m3 heads and avatar2.0

M3 Anime head v1.12.21:
-Head was restructured for better blinking code optimization, this fix should end the double eyelash thing once and for all, i hope…
-Added diagonal eye rolls in the roll menu.(finally!)
-Removed downwards eye angles from eye movement to fix the “I’ve seen some shit” look on your avatar’s face. (downwards angles can still be selected from the roll menu)
-Code optimizations regarding link tracking and other stuff.

Avatar 2.0 v1.12.27:
-Fixed a bug with custom textures not applying to eyelashes.
-Fixed the no copy issue with the main box.
-Added the missing voice chat animation gestures.
-Code optimizations.

Theres also something updated with the kemono body itself, i think the link tracking thing but im not sure cuz i forgot D:

The downwards angles explained

In reality, when the human eye is looking down, the eyelid moves down too, covering the white part above the iris. On SL however, this doesn’t happen, leaving your avatar with this really uncanny “I’ve seen some shit” look on your avatar’s face. So we removed the ability for the eye to look down during eye movement. But all the downwards angles can still be set through the eye roll menu in the options so no changes there.

– Rikugou customization contest 2! –

As the work on the armors is closing a finish, it’s probably a good idea to give you guys a heads up, theres gonna be another Rikugou customization contest at launch of the 2 new armors, so you guys would have plenty of time to prepare for it. So get your Phtochop or MS Paint ready cuz you might be the lucky winner of one (or both) of the new armors !

i have cooked up some more appliers. this time it’s a specular map applier for the venus head and a normal + specular map applier for the kemono body, [M3+] – Venus Anime Head (v.1.12.17) and Kemono – Body (v.1.13.25)

if you want to use these applier with older versions of venus/kemono or anything else, check this thread for instructions on how to modify the scripts to work with whatever you wanna apply materials onto. – M3 specular map applier-

This is so great, when i was doing the skins for the new Venus head, i wondered if people will mod of this head like they did with the normal M3 and can this head be turned into something great. And as soon as it got released, modders pounced on it, there were day 1 mods created within 2 hours of its release.

Nothing makes me more happy than to see peoples creativity and what they can turn my products into, i love the modding community and all the amazing things they do on sl.

Due to the overwhelming success of the kawaii head drill, lots of positive feedback and demand for more, from now on, im going to focus all my efforts on making more contraptions in this style, you wanted it, you got it!

Okay so heres some more progress on the new M3 head. Im done with all the modeling and almost done texturing.

Since this head will be more realistic and just different in general than the other 2 M3 heads, not everything made for the other 2 M3 heads will work. Originally i tried to make the eyelashes and eyebrows compatible with eyelash and eyebrow textures made for the other 2 heads, but by doing so, the result was rather ugly, and on top of that, half of the eyelashes made for the other M3 heads would look distorted and weird, so fuck it.

Things that will work are the eye textures, tears and blush textures. All the UVs and texture layouts will be done in pretty much the same way as the other 2 heads, with the exception of the eyebrows, the eyebrows on this head will move like on a real human head, instead of the traditional 3 different drawn positions. Also this head will use the same paint bucket appliers, so from now on, content creators will need to specify witch head their mods are made for, to avoid confusion.

All that remains now is to make all the face expressions and the rest of the skin tones.

BTW to make things clear, when i say other 2 M3 heads, i mean the original M3 anime head and the M3 kemono head.

Rez/wear your update cards, if nothing happens, go to some other sim or AMH.

Kemono:
Fixed mouth animation AGAIN.
Fixed the bug with crotch not hiding with PG mode on.
Fixed a bug with pelvis part hiding.
Improved the HUD attachment system, should work good now with every monitor resolution.
Script optimizations and clothing attachment system overhaul.

Avatar 2.0:
Improved the HUD attachment system, should work good now with every monitor resolution.
Script optimizations and clothing attachment system overhaul.

M3:
Fixed mouth animation AGAIN.
Fixed the ear bug again.
Fixed the catface emote.
Improved the HUD attachment system, should work good now with every monitor resolution.

Appliers:
Added the ability to test the appliers without the need ot transferring them to an alt.

A note on the clothing attachment system:

The changes to the system makes it hides parts faster and doesnt glitch and leave unhidden parts when the sim lags. If you are a third party clothing creator for Avatar 2.0 or Kemono, you dont have to worry because your clothes will still work with the new system, but you should still look into it and update your clothing items to take advantage of the new changes.

Btw, im not sure how thoroughly the Kemono and the M3 heads were tested so if you encounter any bugs, dont hesitate to IM me.

HUD:
Changes to appliers and texture load system, appliers will now bypass the HUD and load textures directly(a retro loader has been included to load old M3 applier textures onto the new head), the custom button above the preview now clears added custom textures.
Changes to the presets window, the presets window is now a separate HUD that saves/loads face expressions.
Added a hide option to the HUD.
Replaced one eye texture with a new one.
Added extra eye customization options and a v1 viewer compatibility mode.
Bug fixes and general optimization to the HUD, the HUD can now be attached anywhere you want without breaking it, the HUD should now display correctly on low end machines with low graphics settings.

head:
The whites of the eyes and insides of the mouth were separated to not be effected by skin color tinting.
Fixed a long standing and overlooked issue with the face light losing its original settings and resetting to default default LL light settings.
Bug fixes and general optimization to the head, the head has been restructured and now uses less polygons to do the same thing, the ugly seam on top of the head has been eliminated thanks to this.

Misc:
Optimizations to the scripts to consume less resources.
Improved the LL head alpha to hide the entire head and not just the face, for people having problems with rigged mesh hair and LL avatar body (why are you still using the LL body anyway?)
External script command support has been added.

New features:
Ability to control each eye lid separately (closing one eye and stuff like that)
Different color tones for each eye texture.
Backwards compatibility with shitty old viewers like singularity.
Menu repositioning based on HUD attachment point.
Ability to hide the HUD.
New and improved applier system that applies the textures directly to the head.
External face expression control script commands.